‘Fargo’ Showrunner Says New Season Will Be ‘Epic’

Fargo was a huge hit for FX in its initial season, with an all-star cast including Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Colin Hanks, Kate Walsh, and Oliver Platt. The show was such a sensation the network put in an order for a second run, with an all new story and cast of characters. Showrunner Noah Hawley recently told Entertainment Weekly that although the second season of Fargo will still be set in a small Minnesota town, the scale of the show will be much grander than last season.

“The scope of the storytelling this season is a lot bigger—thematically, on a character level, and story-wise. It has more of an epic feel to it. That’s exciting. Within that expansion, we’re still holding onto that ‘Fargo’ tone.”

The Fargo TV series, not to be confused with the feature film Fargo, kept the tone of the film but with a different story and different characters. One of the common bonds of the film and the TV version — besides the state it was located in and the trademark accents –was both versions gave their female stars huge career boosts: Frances McDormand earned a Best Actress Oscar and Allison Tolman went from unknown to Hollywood’s latest darling.

This time around, Fargo will be set in Luverne, Minnesota, in 1979, almost 30 years before the first season’s events took place. Instead of a shady drifter setting off a chain of horrible events, the story focuses on a small town couple caught between rival organized crime gangs. Kirsten Dunst and Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons have already been cast as the couple and Fargo has also added Ted Danson, Jean Smart, and Patrick Wilson to the roster.

No one has been cast yet for the role of the younger version of officer Lou Solverson, who remains the only crossover character announced so far. Keith Carradine played the retired lawman in the first season of Fargo, standing behind his persistent and underrated daughter, officer Molly Solverson (Tolman).

Hawley also told EW that Fargo will have twice the characters this season and that while the show will still have a sense of humor, the time period has led him to think of it along the lines of the very dark film No Country for Old Men, so it was important to him that the characters reflected that intensity.

[Y]ou really have to take these characters seriously and the stakes for them have to be real. There’s a reason we started calling it ‘No Country for Old Fargo’ — it has to have that life-or-death quality.

Hawley also denied any rivalry with the dark crime series True Detective to EW, but that was before the Golden Globes nominees were announced, revealing that the two shows would face off in the Best Miniseries category this year. We’ll see if Hawley and the Fargo creative team feel the same after the Golden Globes January 11.